Information Society Watch

August 16, 2005, Joseph Stiglitz, Daily Times

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes on the importance of considering the needs of developing countries in the formation of intellectual property regimes, which currently reflect the interests of the advanced industrial countries and big multinational corporations. Giving the open source movement as an example, Stiglitz claims that meaningful innovation can occur without intellectual property protection, but if such regimes are necessary they must be tailored to local contexts and pay attention to the needs of the marginalised economic groups. Intellectual property rights are meant to reward innovators for their creative endeavours by creating monopoly power over ideas and thus increase the costs (and rewards) of research. However, because research incorporates a variety of ideas and it is difficult to pinpoint how each individual idea contributes to the final product, the increased price of research slows the spread and use of ideas, reduces incentive for monopolists (like Microsoft) to innovate and enables them to stymie competition, and prevents new innovators from contributing because of fear of violating existing patents.

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